[Oklahoma]

What about the Marxist Guerrillas in Malaysia in the Fifties? And Greece and Turkey after WWII? I had the impression the British military was due a great deal of credit for keeping these areas from falling to Communist influence during the Cold War.

[NZerFromHK]

"What about the Marxist Guerrillas in Malaysia in the Fifties? And Greece and Turkey after WWII? I had the impression the British military was due a great deal of credit for keeping these areas from falling to Communist influence during the Cold War."

The bad news is that they were from the British military of a bygone era. There are probably not a few bigger gulfs between the fighting ethoes of the British militaries personnels who came of age before and after 1965.

[Zhang Fei]

What about the Marxist Guerrillas in Malaysia in the Fifties? And Greece and Turkey after WWII?

Malayan Communist guerrillas fought using looted Japanese weaponry from WWII - at their peak, they numbered a few thousand guerrillas opposed by the vast majority of their minority (Chinese) ethnic group. Unlike Saddam, they did not have tens of billions of dollars in oil money salted away to finance their war. They had no porous borders on every side and a worldwide movement of a billion ethnic Chinese determined to help conquer Malaya with recruits and cash for the greater glory of China.

The Greek anti-Communist effort was home grown, with British and later, American financial help, except for bits where large Allied forces* clashed with the Communist guerrillas while WWII was ongoing. Turkey had no serious issues with Communists after WWII - it was a neutral and incurred no damage from the war.

No - the British claim to fame is the Malayan insurgency, but that was just a series of minor skirmishes, not a major insurgency, unlike South Vietnam, because of geographical issues (guerrilla sanctuaries in Laos, North Vietnam, Cambodia, North Vietnamese land border with China) and massive Soviet financial sponsorship. The Brits love to compare apples and oranges. * Note that there were millions of Allied troops in southern Europe during WWII. Not exactly your classic counter-insurgency war.